The Techjoomla Blog

Joomla 3.0 was released a few minutes back & it brings some revolutionary changes to the Joomla world. From 1.0 to 1.5 to 2.5, Joomla has been notorious for laborious migration processes. We bid adieu to migrations with 3.0. I admit this has really happened in the 1.6, 1.7 versions which were at the best forgettable. So 3.0 is the first real version that shows this. This I believe is the biggest news for Joomla end users. With this Joomla has given yet another reason to stick with this awesome & versatile platform.

01 Joomla 3.0 for Integrators & Site Builders & End Users-  Bye Bye to Migrations & Hello to Upgrades!

02 Joomla 3.0 For Developers - JUI & Bootstrap Uniform & great looking UI without having to Code!

03 Joomla 3.0 - For End Users - Great new UI & UX, Responsive by Default. Mobile Here we come!

One of the major headaches of maintaining a Joomla demo is that you have to refresh the data every now & then to restore the demo to its best as user usage can change a lot of data & interfere with the optimum demonstration of your products. We used to do this by simply having a cron job restore a backup of the database with the optimum data. But this had major issues as we had to upgrade extensions on the demo to the latest & these in some cases also involved structural database changes.

Why Another Cart?

In all the years we have been working in Joomla. Be it in Product development or Providing services to customers, we have always felt the need for a flexible, scalable Shopping cart solution. There are lots of Carts in the market, but for most applications, they are just too huge & come with a lot of overheads. Since we couldn't find anything that fits the bill, we decided to Build one ourselves.

We decided that at least at first, we don't want to do the Product management. So we have provided integrations with Just about all the CCKs that Joomla has at the moment, including Joomla Content as well as a Widget that you can place just about anywhere. Which means you can use any system of your choice to manage your Products.

With Quick2Cart, we shall concentrate on a fast & easy checkout process with all the necessary bells & whistles like Discounting, Shipping, Taxation & Lots.. we really mean lots of Payment Gateways. 

How many of you have looked at the silly 'welcome email' and complained that it's so very un-cool? Gosh! I see so many hands up in the air! So here's an answer to all of that.. and more. With the Email Beautifier, making your Joomla emails look nicer is as simple as A-B-C. Email Beautifier catches all* emails going from your Joomla site, wraps an a...

I think all of us admire the User Experience improvements all of the social networks are continuously doing. Facebook keeps pushing these tiny things and so does LinkedIn. One thing that LinkedIn has had probably from day 1 is the fantastic search. You can choose what to search - People/Companies/Jobs etc

Invalid Tokens- I had been seeing this error on & off on some of the sites we were building both in Joomla 1.5 & 1.6. This error has caused a silent but significant furor on the Forums. Not just at Joomla.org but on the sites of quite a few Template & extension Developers as well. In this Blog, I hope to finally lay the question of why this error occurs to rest.

This time around, we have something that will make every Joomla site say - 'Hey why did I not have this all this time?' Introducing the Joomla 'Email Beautifier' which will help you say bye-bye to all vanilla flavored Joomla emails. How many of you have looked at the silly 'welcome email' and complained that it is so very un-cool? Gosh! I see so ma...

Why have plugin triggers?

The ability to add Plugin Triggers in your Joomla extensions, is a great asset to developers which is not always used to the fullest extent.. Having various Plugin events in your extension means that you give other developers the ability to extend your extension, or modify it to suit their requirements without having to hack core files. The same logic that is used by Joomla content plugins or JomSocial plugins etc can also be applied to your extensions.

Use of Plugin triggers when hacking/ modifying extensions

At Tekdi Web Solutions we do a lot of Joomla Service & get client needs to modify extensions left & right. Where possible this is always done using Plugins & overrides. But the time comes when a hack has to be made. To reduce the impact, instead of modifying the whole extension, we just add plugin triggers where needed & usually send back the modifications to the original developer where possible. This serves two purposes. One is that the code maintenance is way easier & its very easy to document & identify these small hacks. Secondly, there is always a chance that if the main dev accepts your patch, these "hacks" might become regularised in the future.  Even if they aren't, it's still much easier to re-patch the extension with plugin triggers.

So in order to share this knowledge, I asked one of our Developers, Shantanu to write a small blog about how you can go about adding triggers. Shantanu is just one of the new bloggers I shall be introducing to this blog in the next few weeks. So stay tuned for more!
Over to Shantanu for the same! Read on to read the full blog!

Parth Lawate

Today, on the 1st of September 5 years ago Joomla was unveiled to the world for the first time. It's time for celebrations for the Joomla community worldwide which is one of the most diverse communities in the Open Source world. With the least entry barriers, where anyone can come in & take leadership & make change happen. It is this marvelous community of users, developers, designers, documentation creators, bug reporters & fixers, evangelists & every single person that has touched & been touched by this piece of software.

After a long wait, we have finally released Invitex, our Viral Invitations solution for Joomla , CB & JomSocial. The first release comes with support for directly typing email addresses, CSV import as well as the ability to import contact from a variety of Email providers. You can see some Screenshots of the Solution here .

A Must have for Joomla!, JomSocial & CB based Social Networking websites.

I might end up starting another Social Extensions debate here but I haven't come across a blog or article that addresses a large cross-section of them. I wish this turns out to be more of a bloggy discussion than just a blog. With the web landscape littered with a lot of software to create your Social network both in & outside the Joomla Commun...

I have been doing some Magento related development recently & came across a twitter community they have around a Hashtag. Anyone with questions about Magento can post them with this hashtag & someone is quick to answer. I guess it could help as a lot of people already use this media for short QA sessions & it's more easily accessible th...

JBolo New version Details We have just released a version that will fix most of the conflict issues due to other extensions or Javascript in templates. This version has been reportedly working fine with most of the users who reported problems. Please Download the fresh copy & install it & let us know if you still face issues. Uninstall the ...

Invitex, the Full Invitations Solution For Joomla,CB & JomSocial , is now available for Beta Testers.

For quite some time we have been working on a  much sought after extension. A System for Viral Invitations. This will of course be released under GNU GPL & integrate seamlessly with CB, JomSocial as well as a standalone Joomla installation. You can see more details about it in Techjoomla Labs.

Beta Testers

We are looking for some beta testers for this app. Testers will get the extension with a 12 month Support subscription for free.
A Total of 10 testers will be accepted. If you are not a Techjoomla Beta Tester yet, drop an email to [email protected] This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it to apply. To know more about the Beta Tester program, click here.

Read on for Feature Overview

JBolo! Chat for Joomla is here !!
Techjoomla.com Extension Updates
JBolo! is a really cool extension that will integrate Facebook & Gmail like chat into Joomla Websites. The name JBolo! is derived from the  Hindi word 'Bolo' which means to talk. Based on the Gmail/Facebook Style jQuery Chat Script by Anant Garg, this application promises to be an exciting thing for Social Networks in Joomla.

Read on for complete information & Features!